Page 25 of The Curse of Penryth Hall
She nodded with a weak smile, carrying all the millions of unspoken things between us. I should have probably asked her more. Seen who had access to the house, who could possibly have known I was here. But my own safety meant little when Tamsyn’s happiness was on the line.
CHAPTERTHIRTEENAnother Sort of Garden Party
THATevening passed at Penryth Hall without anything of note. I slept better than I had in months with a full stomach thanks to Mrs. Penrose’s gustatory endeavors, and woke with a newfound determination to get to the bottom of this puzzle. And while Mr. Kivell might have found some sort of charm beneath my bed, I sensed whoever left that wasn’t the same one who had attacked me. It seemed silly to ask for spiritual assistance to do something when one was more than willing to bloody one’s own hands. No, whoever it was would go on as they’d begun that very first night, with far more direct methods.
Bright and early the next morning I began the three-mile trek from Penryth Hall down to the village of Lothlel Green, determined to speak with Nellie Smythe and find out her connection to Sir Edward. The rutted road wore a thick sheet of mud from the recent rains, making for a messy walk. I would have simply taken my own roadster down were it not quite such an oddity, and there was no need to make any greater of a spectacle of myself than I already had. I’d convinced Mrs. Penrose that I ought to do the market for her. Though it didn’ttake much convincing after our tea the day before. The older woman had taken a bit of a shine to me, and while I experienced an iota of guilt for playing upon her trusting nature, I couldn’t be bothered with such tender feelings.
I was only a handful of yards from the gates of Penryth Hall when I saw a woman coming up the path to meet me, a matching basket upon her arm. She was pretty enough, probably in her mid- to late fifties if that, with a round cheerful face and dark hair all swept back beneath an oversized straw hat.
“Hello there,” she said, lifting a hand into the sun. “Have you come from the house?”
I nodded. “I’m headed into the village.”
The woman’s brows knit together in concern. “You’re not from here, maid. Do you know the way well enough?”
I nodded again, glancing down into her basket. It was full up on pasties and boules. Sausages and cheeses, jars of preserves and pickles, along with some fresh vegetables. My stomach growled just to look at it.
“Oh, forgive me. I’m Alice Martin. My husband has a small holding just over that rise. When I heard about Sir Edward I thought I’d bring Dorothea some things to ease her burden. I’m certain the poor dear has had her hands full with the comings and goings.”
“Dorothea?”
“Dorothea Penrose, the housekeeper there. I’ve known her since I was a girl. We both grew up in this village.”
Ah, so that made sense. “I think she’s feeling poorly this morning. A headache. But I’m sure she’ll be glad of the company.”
Mrs. Martin nodded with a warm smile. “You be careful, dearie. There are all sorts of strange goings-on in the villagelately. Odd visitors and now this business with Sir Edward…” She gave her head a long, slow shake. “Well, one can never be too careful.”
No. No one couldn’t.
IHADN’T SETfoot in Lothlel Green since the wedding, but not much had changed in the eponymous village. The great center square was just as it had been, lushly planted with all sorts of flowering bushes and greenery. The dreary church where Tamsyn had married Sir Edward remained in its post of honor along High Street alongside the soulless-looking stone vicarage where the insipid vicar must live.
Fitting.
A tavern, a few shops—greengrocer, butcher. I could walk from one end to the other in a handful of minutes at most. I checked the list that Mrs. Penrose had given me and set to work. I stopped in at three different shops. At first the villagers greeted me with a bit of trepidation, but soon they warmed up. Picking up soap, a bit of thread—not that I knew one end of a needle from the other—and whatever information I could glean about the poor late Sir Edward Chenowyth and his goings-on. It seemed I wasn’t the first outsider to be asking questions this morning. A man from theLondon Daily Newshad come in on the morning train and already been making the rounds. I bristled at the thought, knowing keenly how quickly things can go topsy-turvy when a good story was on the line. And what was more sensational than the idea of a curse? I’d been little more than a girl when my own scandal broke—but the gentle clack of a shutter, the gray typeface, those things left an indelible scar. I’d gone from the prized calf, fatted for the marriage market, to the great whore of Babylon overnight. And not evenall my father’s money could have saved me, so he did the only thing he knew to do—he sent me away. I swallowed the bitter memory down.
No. The press’s appearance in town made it doubly important that I quash this curse talk, the sooner the better. I wasn’t about to subject Tamsyn to that sort of scrutiny, have her chased away from the life she’d chosen, no matter how badly she’d hurt me.
I made short work of confirming Tamsyn’s complaints of her perfidious husband. The first words on everyone’s lips when the topic would arise:That poor girl he’d married.Followed by an account of Edward’s libidinous indiscretions. By my loose reckoning he had five natural children—excluding little Jori—most of whom were conveniently sent off and their ill-fated mothers moved away from the village to stay with a distant infirm and fictitious aged aunt.
Honestly, the man was lucky no one had castrated him long before now. I made my final purchase, a pocketful of penny sweets for Jori, and set off to find Nellie Smythe.
She lived with her mother in a cramped cottage that looked no more than two rooms up and two down. Chickens pecked in the grass, and a meager garden plot sat on the sunny side of the lot. An undersized gilt pig snuffled and rooted around in an inadequate pen on the far side of the yard. Closer to me, I spotted a young woman digging into the dirt with a rusty trench knife, driving it into the loamy soil. A boy, perhaps five if that, sat at the edge of the garden picking peas and dropping them into a sack slung over his shoulder. His clothes were ragged and thin, and he could certainly do with a meal or two by the look of him. I glanced down into my basket full of meat, the contents of which were likely far more than the pair saw in a month.
“I’m looking for Miss Smythe, is this the right house?” I shielded my eyes and leaned over the wooden gate.
The woman looked up at me from beneath the wide straw brim of her sun hat. I probably had a handful of years on her. She had doe-like brown eyes and yellow hair plastered to her cheek with sweat. She was a handsome woman with a smattering of freckles across her nose and that lovely English Rose complexion that young girls bought creams and pastes to acquire.
“I don’t know who you are or what you want, but I’ll tell you like I told that newspaperman. I got nothing to say about Edward Chenowyth.” She dug her knife hard into the soil with a grunt and pulled out a particularly large weed, throwing it into a bucket behind her.
“I—”
She looked up, her jaw firm, and pointed the muddied blade at me. “I had nothing to do with it. I wish to God I’d never had anything to do withhim, but I can’t change the past—” She rocked back onto her heels, brushing the sweat from her brow with the back of her hand, replacing it with a smudge of dirt. “That is why you’ve come, isn’t it? To see if I’ve killed him. It’s what everyone is thinking.” Her anger was palpable. But there was something else behind it, a futility that sparked in the air between us.
“I don’t think I’d blame you if you did. Seems he needed it, if what they say in town’s the truth.”
She let out a surprised laugh and resumed her assault on the unwanted vegetation in her paltry little vegetable patch. “You aren’t from here.” Another grunt.
I shook my head. The wooden gate creaked as I pushed it open and entered the garden. “What gave it away?”
